The first episode of new podcast series “Flesh & Blood & Bone” by Tony and Kyra Gardner has been released.Tony Gardner, the mastermind behind many makeup and antimitotic effects for a wide variety of horror movies such asSeed of Chucky,joins forces with his film and music video director daughter Kyra, to delve into the secrets and anecdotes they have to share about working in the industry. Explaining the purpose of the podcast, Kyra said:
“And we wanted to start this podcast because I went into film and I’m in directing and it’s been so nice to have a dad who’s in the industry and can give me advice or just share stories that are super interesting. And a lot of the stories he tells are really fun. So I wanted to be able to share that privilege and those stories with other people, but also bring you guys the perspective of somebody who’s been in the film industry since the 80s, a long time ago, and somebody who’s just starting in it, and we can bring you both the perspective of different genders.
During the podcast, Tony shared a story about this college classes, including the time a director was brought into talk to the group about a new film they had been working on. While he did not mention the direction by name, the elder Gardner noted that one scene they were shown featured a female singer in a nightclub.
“And I remember the director saying she started like a local personality and she’s really good and super talented. I feel like she’s really gonna be big someday and she goes by the name Madonna.”
The same class involved Gardner having to write a paper, and he decided very quickly that the paper was his best ticket to being able to meet some of his heroes, including the likes of George Lucas and Rick Baker. Therefore, the subject for his paper became “Using Mechanical Effects as a Character.”
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Having a paper, a thesis, and a list of people to meet was one thing. Actually interviewing the people in the days before cellphones and Zoom calls was another. To try and secure his interviews, Gardner had to do it the old fashioned way, driving to the cities their shops were located, and looking them up in the phonebook.
“How many Rick Baker’s are there in North Hollywood?” Gardner asked himself. Answering his own question, there were a lot, and he just needed to guess which one sounded like someplace the people he was looking for would live.
“So I was able to set up a meeting with Carlo Rambaldi and Steven Spielberg, and the Carlo Rambaldi one actually happened as planned and was hilarious because he was pretending it in speaking English. It was pretty funny. And then the one with Spielberg was just always getting canceled, and I would go to the office so much that I ended up having friends with the secretary Kathy Schweitzer who I ended up cat sitting for after school was out.”
During one of his attempts to contact Steven Spielberg, Gardner got into a conversation withGremlinsstar Zach Galliganbecause he was the only person there to talk to. Gardner didn’t realize he was speaking to an actor until Galligan got called back to the set of the 1984 smash hit. Similarly, when attempting to contact special effects wizard Rick Baker, Gardner originally met with his father, Ralph Baker. However, this meeting was one that eventually paid off, when Rick Baker later called up Gardner and after talking for a while offered him a job.
“He’s like ‘you’re all over the place. You want to do music and you wanna do theater and you want to do effects and you want to do film’ and he’s like, ‘this is only a four week job but maybe after four weeks, you’ll know this is one of the things that you want to do or not.’ "
The job was driving around and picking up supplies for a little music video by the name of Thriller, a story that Gardner promises to tell in the second episode of the podcast next week. In the meantime, you can catch the rest of the first episode on Kyra Gardner’s Youtube page or listen to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
